Respect Your Mother

"Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values." (Charles Lindbergh)
We talk about the lack of energy policy for the USA, climate change, weapons of mass destruction, the need for green building on these pages pretty regularly.

GGUSA wants to give you a present. We are not asking you to write a politician, or change a bad habit, or buy a new light bulb. Let’s get down to basics. Global Green's mission is to “create a value shift towards a more sustainable and secure future.” We want to focus here on the words “value shift.”

What changes values? You might be out of touch with your values. Sometimes people don't have the attention to wonder what their values are because they are too busy trying to survive. Values only become important as motivators when your basic needs are not already met.

It is a good idea to become more conscious of your true current values, because your true current values are your best guide to how to live a better life. You can accomplish this values consciousness by completing a values and morals inventory which will help you to examine what it is that you want for you, and compare those desires to the moral desires that society (or higher principles) have for you. Most of you will find that there is a whole lot of relationship between what you want and what society wants. If you are honest, however, you'll sometimes find that there are areas and aspects of your life where society wants one thing from you and you want something different. So take an inventory.

How to start? Go outside (leave your cell phone inside) and touch the Earth or sit down on it. Let your heart first fill with gratitude about what your Mother (the Earth) has given you? Your food, your fuel, the air you breathe, the water you need to survive. Then contemplate those gifts. Stay in connection with the Earth. Just sit with it and think about it. Pretty crazy huh? Then, begin your value inventory and see if it is balanced with helping the earth continue to provide you what you value?

Then.... ask what you can give back.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." (Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854)